Video recordings of naturally occurring interactions in England, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Scotland, and Ireland were coded and analyzed to examine the effects of culture, gender, and age on interpersonal distance, body orientation, and touch. Results partially supported expected differences between contact cultures of southern Europe and noncontact cultures of northern Europe with respect to touch. More touch was observed among Italian and Greek dyads than among English, French, and Dutch dyads. In addition, an interaction effect between age and gender for body orientation suggested opposite development trends for mixed-sex dyads and male dyads. Whereas mixed dyads tended to maintain less direct orientations as they aged, male dyads maintained more direct orientations.

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The effects of the employment relationship (superior vs coworker), recipient's response (positive vs negative), and sex of the rater (male vs female) on perceptions of sexual harassment, appropriateness of the initiator's behavior, and appropriateness of the recipient's behavior were investigated. Subjects were 82 female and 76 male undergraduate students. The results of a 2 × 2 × 2 multivariate analysis of variance indicated main effects for response of the recipient and sex of the rater. Univariate analyses indicated that women rated the initiator less favorably than men, that men perceived the situation as more harassing and approved of the recipient more than women when the recipient's responses were positive, although there was no difference between men and women when the recipient's responses were negative.

This paper addresses the importance of developing leadership skills in the encoding and decoding of nonverbal messages. It takes the position that impressions formed in superior-subordinate relationships are often determined by the nonverbal communication that occurs in face-to-face meetings. Based on social exchange principles, a situational view of considerate leadership behavior is developed where a superior attempts to make interaction less costly and aversive to subordinates by adapting to them nonverbally. A taxonomy of nonverbal displays of status, consisting of kinesic, proxemic, and temporal norms, is presented, which shows how supervisors often abuse the physical presence, personal territory, and time of their employees. It is suggested that superiors become more aware of these significant nonverbal messages.ORGANIZATIONS HAVE BECOME increasingly aware of the need for management training that includes the development of skills in effective face-to-face communication. In a recent survey of executives in 45 large industrial corporations Swenson found that face-to-face communication within the firm was considered the most important communication skill.' This is not surprising in view of the fact that as much as 90 percent of a manager's time may be spent communicating, with speaking and listening comprising a much larger percentage than reading and writing.

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